Into the smoke: cowboy hero raced to save lives

He literally seared with pain upon losing his son in the Iraq war, setting himself ablaze. His life is now one long act of mourning and homage, and watching the Boston Marathon was another chapter.

When two explosions tore through the crowd near the finish line, rather than flee the smoky chaos, Carlos Arredondo ran into it. He crossed Boylston Street, jumped the security fence and landed in the middle of fallen bodies. Two women lay motionless. Another was standing, frozen, looking down at the wounded and repeating, "Oh my God." A young man, ashen-faced, lay awake but expressionless, his left leg only a bone below the knee.

The worst attacks in the United States since September 11, 2001, produced their share of heroes. Bystanders rushed into the fray, ripping up cloth to make tourniquets and stanch blood gushing from the stumps of severed legs, as Arredondo did, amid fears of more blasts.

But for Arredondo - wearing a white cowboy hat as he pushed a wheelchair holding the terribly wounded youung man in a photo used on newspaper front pages - it was a second taste of celebrity borne of brutal tragedy.

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Arredondo had come to the marathon to watch National Guardsmen run the race in honour of fallen soldiers like his son Alex, who was aged 20 when he was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004.

Arredondo received the news his son had died from crisply uniformed US Marines. He went berserk. In an incident that made the news, he smashed the windshield of the Marines' van with a sledgehammer, climbed in with a propane torch and a petrol can, doused it and himself in fuel and lit the torch. A blast ensued, but the Marines pulled him to safety, with second- and third-degree burns to 20 per cent of his body.

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After healing from his burns, Arredondo made it his mission in life to protest against the Iraq war, travelling around the United States in a green pick-up truck turned roving monument to Alex. At the marathon on Monday, he was handing out American flags as a tribute to his son.

Arredondo, a Red Cross volunteer and native of Costa Rica, said he had acted out of instinct after the blasts, using training he had received as a fireman and a rescuer of injured bullfighters in his homeland.

After jumping the security fence to help on Monday, Arredondo rushed to help the young man whose legs were so badly damaged. He asked the man his name - Jeff Bauman - and then told him, "Stay still. The ambulance is here."

Arredondo was quickly joined by another bystander. Maybe a doctor, Arredondo doesn't know. The stranger asked for tourniquets. Arredondo tore strips out of a sweater he found lying on the ground.

As the other man tied the tourniquets on the injured man's thighs, Arredondo talked to the victim, and tried to block his view of his legs. "The ambulance is here," he repeated. "You're okay. Relax."

The weather was mild for Boston in spring, but she had brought a chill home with her

Somebody appeared with an empty wheelchair. An angel, Arredondo thought later. Arredondo grabbed the chair and put Bauman in the seat. They wheeled him down Boylston, bypassing the medical tent. The man was too injured for that.

"Ambulance! Ambulance! Ambulance!" Arredondo yelled. As they went, a tourniquet slipped off. Blood flowed again. Arredondo grabbed the tourniquet and wrenched it tight. Finally, they found an ambulance. He lifted the man out of the chair.

"What's his name?" the medic asked. Arredondo had forgotten. He asked Bauman again. Somehow, the wounded man was still calm enough to start spelling it out, to be sure they got it right.

The ambulance doors closed. The man was gone.

What was the injured man's name? "I can't remember," Arredondo said on Tuesday.

Having saved a man's life, Arredondo found his wife. They went home to Roslindale, an outer part of Boston. He was shaking until 7pm. His wife Melida didn't feel warm again until about 2am. The weather was mild for Boston in spring, but she had brought a chill home with her.

On Tuesday, Jeff Bauman woke up in hospital in Boston, an air tube down his throat, both of his legs amputated at the knee. His father, who had seen the image of his badly injured son on the internet and rushed from New Hampshire to find him, was at his side.

Bauman's parents, reported The New York Times, knew how lucky their son, aged 27, had been. "The man in the cowboy hat - he saved Jeff’s life," his mother, Csilla Bauman, said.

His father, also Jeff, was in awe of what Arredondo did: “There’s a video where he goes right to Jeff, picks him right up and puts him on the wheelchair and starts putting the tourniquet on him and pushing him out. I got to talk to this guy.”

In another part of Boston on Tuesday, Arredondo tried to explain why he had handled the shock of the bombings with such calm, given an earlier shock, the death of his son, had nearly killed him.